TORONTO — Brandon Morrow was sitting at his locker, stroking his beard as he contemplated his crossword puzzle. The scene was familiar, but it had been almost three months since he last struck that pose in that place.

In the interval, Morrow was out of sight and virtually out of mind, and his return for a weekend visit served as a reminder that he was an archetype of sorts — a symbol of so much that went wrong for the Toronto Blue Jays pitching staff this season.

Coming off his best year in 2012, the slender right-hander tried to pitch through a forearm injury that finally shut him down late in May. The initial diagnosis was a muscle strain. Finally, through a process of elimination, doctors concluded that his radial nerve was compressed — “entrapped,” they called it — where it passes through his forearm. The radial nerve runs the length of the arm, its path crossing the outside of the elbow.

After assorted tests, treatment, rest, rehab and attempts to pitch, Morrow visited renowned orthopedic surgeon James Andrews, who told him to stop.

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“He said, ‘This is something you cannot throw through, no matter how hard you try. You cannot throw through an entrapped nerve. It’s just not possible,’ ” Morrow recalled.

He is halfway through his prescribed six weeks of rest. By mid-October, he expects to be throwing at 100% capacity or heading for a tricky bit of surgery to release the nerve.

Morrow is one of six Blue Jays pitchers currently on the disabled list. Four of them — Josh Johnson, Juan Perez, Ramon Ortiz and Morrow — are done for the season.

You feel like you’re a sick kid during winter and watching all your friends sled outside and you’re at the window

Opening the year as the Jays’ No. 2 starter, Morrow was dominant in his first outing, a loss to Cleveland, but experienced nagging arm problems soon afterward. In most of his subsequent starts, he reminded no one of the pitcher who posted a 2.96 ERA last year and won 10 games, despite missing more than two months while recovering from a muscle strain in his side.

The forearm problem began to worry him during a May 23 start against Baltimore and he had to quit after two innings of his next start against Atlanta.

His nerve injury was difficult to diagnose — Andrews told him he sees about one case a year — and it is impossible to pinpoint the precise spot where the nerve is compressed, he said. From the start, doctors suspected the nerve problem, but were not certain, and everyone involved hoped a couple weeks’ rest would be the cure.

But each time he rested and resumed throwing, the pain would return. At times during his rehab in Florida, he would feel “good enough” to play catch, but when he threw in a simulated game, it became obvious it was foolhardy to continue, he said.

“It was not only painful, but affecting my mechanics,” he said. “Trying to work around it, I could tell that it was just affecting too much. The command wasn’t there, the action on my pitches wasn’t there.”

Morrow admits it was tempting to press on, as he had in May. His instinct was to pitch through the soreness because, as he says, “everybody’s been sore before and gone out and pitched.”

“That’s the way you have to be, though,” he said. “Mentally, you can’t be wishy-washy about it. You’ve got to be determined that you’re going to pitch in the game. You can’t say, ‘I don’t know. It’s pretty sore but I don’t know how I’m going to be.’ You’ve got to set your mind to pitching.”

Andrews set his mind to resting. Morrow has been undergoing treatment near his home in Phoenix. Naturally, he hopes rest will do the job, eliminating the need for surgery to release the nerve. If he needs surgery, he will require three months to recover, which would allow him to start spring training on time.

Meanwhile, as his team has endured a rough summer on the field, Morrow has endured a rough summer off it.

“Tough for me to watch, to even turn on a game,” he said. “You feel like you’re a sick kid during winter and watching all your friends sled outside and you’re at the window, and you’re like, ‘Why can’t I join you?’ ”